Category Archives: Switzerland

Our blog only rarely covers Switzerland – in fact, it has been only been covered in four of our over 1000 blog posts to date (three of which were cross-country comparisons). This is largely due to the fact that the Swiss presidency differs considerably from the other presidencies discussed here. Rather than the incumbent of a unipersonal office, the Swiss president is the chairperson ‘Federal Council’ – a seven-person collegial executive elected for a fixed four-year term in a joint session of the houses of parliament – and rotates annually among the members of the council.[1] As first among equals, Swiss presidents are effectively the country’s highest representative; yet, they have no authority over their fellow councillors. Given that the Federal Council is a voluntary all-party/grand coalition (its party composition is determined by a largely stable ‘magic formula’) and acts ‘in corpore’ (as one body), it is often presented as a unitary actor. However, a range of issues and discussion have highlighted a very interesting phenomenon in this respect – the lack of coordination between different councillors and the difficulties of the collegial presidency to speak with one voice.

Newly elected Federal Council president
Ueli Maurer irritated national and audiences at the World Economic Forum in Davos
two weeks ago when he remarked that the Swiss government had “long
since dealt with the Khashoggi case. We have agreed to resume the financial
dialogue and to normalise relations [with Saudi Arabia].” This assessment
was however not shared by his fellow councillors, and particularly those
leading the foreign relations and trade departments were
quick to stress that relations had all but normalised (and that trade
restrictions remain in place). At the same time, the finance department, led by
Maurer himself, is continuing its ‘finance dialogue’ with Saudia Arabia. Thus,
Maurer’s remarks not only highlight a lack of coordination within departments,
but also between the council and its highest representative.

A similar pattern emerged with
regard to the new framework treaty between Switzerland and the European Union. The
results of five-year long negotiations had been presented in December 2018, eliciting
contradictory comments from federal councillors – while Ingazio Cassis (heading
the foreign affairs department) praised
the draft agreement, his colleagues criticised the deal and the Federal
Council failed to present a common position (this had already been an issue in
early 2018 during before the last phase of negotiations). Eventually, Maurer
called for re-negotiations, despite clear signals from the EU commission
that there would be no leeway to renegotiate the current agreement.

Last, parliamentarians have increasingly voiced their discontent with the lack of coordination among councillors and their government departments in important areas. Most recently, this was illustrated the lack of a common political and economic strategy on investments from and engagement with China – although promised over ten years ago, policy differs greatly among the departments which hold various responsibilities in this regard.

These examples show the problems of coordination in a collegial presidency in which there is only a first among equals, yet none above (primus inter pares vs primus supra pares). Nevertheless, none of these is (yet) sufficient to change the council’s modus operandi. Nevertheless, the new EU treaty may force councillors to adopt a more cooperative approach – both among each other as well as between the Federal Council and parliament. To date, such questions as well as that of political leadership of Federal Councillors has yet received little scholarly attention. Although the Swiss presidency is relatively unique (the closest comparable example are the Captains Regent in San Marino), the above examples demand further investigation and could well mirror patterns of intra-executive conflict in other regime types.

[1] Although the president is formally elected by parliament, the order of rotation is strictly based on the length of time that councillors served on the Federal Council.

In the first blog post of 2015, I explored the origins of and various customs and conventions surrounding the Christmas and New Year’s addresses by European heads of state. This year, I will look more closely at the content of these speeches (although focussing – for the sake of brevity – only on presidents, i.e. non-hereditary heads of state this time).

Finnish president Sauli Niinistö records his New Year’s speech for 2016 | (c) Office of the President of the Republic of Finland 2016

As I noted in my post last year, Christmas and New Year’s addresses rarely rarely belong to the most important political speeches in European democracies and often include a short summary of the last year’s events in the country. Common themes (apart from holiday wishes) are relatively rare. This year, however, many presidents directly addressed the refugee crisis in Europe. The presidents of Austria and Germany who have had to deal with extraordinary refugee streams both called for compassion and tried to strengthen the ‘can do’-spirit that has so far characterised the reactions of Federal Chancellors’ Merkel and Faynmann and volunteers in both countries. Presidents of other countries hit by the surge of refugees did not address the issue so clearly. Hungarian president Ader referred to it among other unexpected events of 2015, while the Slovenian and Croatian presidents Pahor and Grabar-Kitarović in their – significantly shorter seasons’ greetings – did not raise the issue at all apart from vague references to difficulties.

The refugee crisis featured more prominently on the other hand in the speeches of Slovak president Kiska and Czech president Zeman – yet taking almost diametrically opposed positions. Kiska largely downplayed the issue stating Slovakia was much less affected than other countries and the issue should not dominate the national agenda. Zeman on the other hand, called the influx of refugees as “an organized invasion” and called for young male refugees to return to their country to fight ISIS. Given Zeman’s previous statements this is hardly surprising, yet it is generally unusual for a Christmas message to include such controversial material. The refugee crisis also took centre stage in speeches by Finnish president Niinistö as he justified the steps taken by the government to limit the number of people receiving help.

Another theme in presidential speeches were national tragedies and the security. The Paris attacks featured strongly in French president Hollande’s speech, so did the Germanwing air crash in German president Gauck’s Christmas message. The ongoing Ukrainian crisis and potential conflict with Russia as well as the war in Syria were included in a number of speeches. Yet presidents also focussed on the economic situation and way of the recession – most prominently included in the messages of the presidents of Greece, Portugal and Iceland. The latter’s speech was however mostly reported on due to the fact that president Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson announced that he would not run for a sixth term as president.

Overall, this once again highlights that presidential Christmas and New Year’s addresses can be important indicators of the political situation or the importance of particular events throughout the year. Until now, there has nevertheless been only very limited academic research on presidential statements on these occasions. So far, I could only find an analysis of the role of religion in new year’s addresses by Swiss Federal Presidents – showing an overall decline in biblical references throughout the years. [1] In most European republics appear to follow this trend – explicit biblical references beyond a mere reference to the holiday can only be found in the speeches of the presidents of Malta and Hungary.

Last but not least (and partly inspired by the DailyMail’s analysis of the photographs on Queen Elizabeth II’s desk), I think it is worth looking at the setting of presidents’ speeches. Where speeches are broadcast on TV (or recorded and then put on youtube), the setting is surprisingly similar with the president usually sitting or standing in front of flags or a fireplace. In Germany, this set-up had so much become the norm that Christian Wulff’s walking speech among a group of surprisingly diverse citizens (see centre image of above collage) caused great excitement among editors trying to fill the seasonal news slump. More unusual however was Swiss Federal President Adolf Ogi’s address of 2000 – he stood in front of a railway tunnel (watch the video here).

Yesterday, Johann Schneider-Ammann, from the center-right Free Democratic Party (FDP) was elected as the new Federal president. Having been elected as vice-president the year before, his election was no surprise with most attention attached to the election of the remaining six Federal Councillors.

The Swiss National Council | photo via wikimedia commons

The Swiss Federal President differs from the other presidents discussed on this blog. Rather than being the head of state or head of the executive, s/he is merely chairperson of the seven-person ‘Federal Council’ which acts collectively as both head of state and head of government. While the Federal President is is the highest representative of the Swiss state and is ‘primus inter pares’ (first among equals) with regards to other members of the Federal Council s/he has no authority over the other Federal Councillors. Although elected by parliament, neither the president nor the collegiate government of the Swiss Federation is responsible to or dependent on the legislature. The Federal President, too, differs in the mode of election from other presidents. S/he is elected only for a one-year term in a joint session of both houses of parliament from among the members of the Federal Council and (usually) after having been elected to serve as vice-president in the previous year. Re-election is possible, yet not for consecutive terms; the constitution also forbids the election of a serving president as next year’s vice-president.

For these reasons, we do not usually include Switzerland or the Swiss presidency in the coverage of this blog. The election also tends to receive very little international coverage (as frequently lamented by Swiss journalists). Nevertheless, looking at election over time can prove to be an interesting and insightful exercise. Although the winner of the election is more or less predetermined, there is significant variation among the individual results pointing at political dynamics beneath the surface of the data and illustrating the need for further study and investigation. On the occasion of yesterday’s election, I therefore take a look back at the presidential elections in Switzerland during the last century based on a new data set of the votes obtained by Swiss Federal Presidents between 1919 and 2015.

The Federal President is elected by a joint of session of both parliamentary chambers – the National Council (proportional representation; currently 200 members) and the Council of States (two representative per state, 1 per former ‘half-state’; currently 46 members) in the first winter session of the parliament (which now coincides with the first session after each parliamentary election). To be elected, a candidate must obtain the absolute majority of valid votes – the latter is often up to 25% lower than the number of National Council members as invalid votes have become established means of expressing discontent over the election of a predestined candidate (and some do not even pick up a ballot paper). The vast majority of presidents in the last 100 years has nevertheless managed to obtain the votes of over 60% of the members of parliament. The record for the highest number of votes obtained during the last 100 years is jointly held by Hans-Peter Tschudi and Willi Ritschard who both obtained 213 out of 246 votes (85.59%) – both when running for their respective second time. Given that nine others presidents obtained at least 80% of votes of total members, this record is however not as striking as its opposite. The record for lowest number of votes obtained is held by Micheline Calmy-Rey who received just 106 votes for her second candidacy and was only elected due to fact that only 223 ballots (out of 246) were collected by members of parliament and only 198 valid votes were cast.

Out of the 96 elections held between 1919 and 2015, 32 were contested by previous office holders – 23 presidents then served a second term, two presidents were re-elected three times thus serving four terms. Factoring in his first term as president in 1915 respectively, Giuseppe Motta even served five terms. The re-election is thereby conditioned by the continued membership in the Federal Council where presidency and vice-presidency are decided (albeit informally) by the seniority principle. On average, former president can generally sustain their support base in parliament (former office holders only lose 1.45% votes per election attempt), yet there are great variations. While Calma-Rey already achieved only 147/246 votes (59.8%) for her first candidacy as federal president (and thus the lowest share of support among members of parliament for a president since 1935), she lost 16.7% in her second candidacy compared to these numbers (a record loss). Five other presidents, too, lost a two-digit percentage, but as their previous results ranged between 70-80%, the loss was less dramatic. On the other hand, presidents with meagre results in the first election could boast their result in the second attempt. For instance, Pascal Couchepin was first elected president with 166/246 votes in 2003 but received an above-average result of 197/246 votes in 2008.

The result presidential candidates obtained as vice-president (usually) a year before their election as president would appear to be a better predictor of the support for (all) presidential candidates. A first look at the scatter plot above seems to confirm this, yet the correlation coefficient is merely R2=0.2661 thus showing only a weak correlation. Overall, the variation between results appears to be even greater than between the results of repeated candidacies. While the average change is a mere 2.31%, gains and losses of up to 20% are not unusual.

Rather than being entirely ‘pre-determined’, the electoral results for Swiss Federal Presidents can thus be an important indicator of the relationship between legislature and executive and the evaluation of the leadership capabilities (or past leadership) of individual Federal Councillors. To return to the case of Micheline Calmy-Rey, both of her comparatively poor results can be explained by criticism of her activities as head of the foreign policy department which she headed during her membership in the Federal Council 2003-2011. Similar explanations can be found for other examples of poor or excellent performance in Swiss presidential election, illustrating that there is variation worth studying even in a consociational democracy with a multi-party collegiate executive such as Switzerland which is due to its uniqueness often avoided by political scientists. Even comparison with other countries are possible (e.g. with the number of votes received by government candidates in indirect presidential elections). Last, this brief analysis has of course not included a number of other interesting factors, such as the timing of parliamentary elections, the parliamentary power balance and party membership of Federal Presidents, or the votes received by Federal Councillors before being put forward as (vice-)president. If you have further ideas on how to find and explain patterns in these election results, please feel free to leave these in the comments below.

Every year millions of Britons gather in front of their ‘tellies’ to watch the Queen’s annual Christmas message. This year, over 7.8m viewers saw and heard her speak on the topic of reconciliation in the light of the WW I centenary and were delighted by references to her visit to the set of ‘Games of Thrones’, making it the UK’s Christmas TV highlight (it attracted 1.5m more viewers than the ‘Doctor Who’ Christmas special and 2m more viewers than the Christmas episode of the period drama ‘Downtown Abbey’). Given that this blog deals with presidents, i.e. non-hereditary heads of state, writing about the Queen’s Christmas message might be peculiar for some readers. Nevertheless, the tradition of addressing the nation has – in the European context – first been documented for monarchs, with presidents continuing this tradition.

Queen Elizabeth’s (left) Royal Christmas Message is one the most watched Christmas addresses by a head of state worldwide; German president Gauck (right) is one of only three presidents in Europe to deliver his holiday address on Christmas Day.

British monarchs have only addressed the nation at Christmas since 1932 (on proposal of the BBC’s founding director). Earlier examples of public addresses to the nation on the occasion of Christmas or the New Year have been documented for Kings of Denmark and the German Emperor since the late 19th century. Starting with general well-wishes for the New Year and/or Christmas, holiday addresses have now developed into more elaborate speeches which are designed to reach a wide audience. Apart from general remarks about the holiday season and a short review of the last year, heads of state also often highlight specific themes in their message. Thereby, the degree to which the content is ‘political’ tends to vary with the constitutional position of the head of state. In the European monarchies the content is often coordinated with the government (although much this process – like so many interactions between constitutional monarchs and elected representatives – remains shrouded in secrecy) and themes or highlights tend to be rather uncontroversial. Likewise, indirectly elected presidents – with some exceptions – only rarely include strong political statements or use speeches to express entirely new opinions. In Switzerland, New Year’s Day coincides with the inauguration of a new Federal President (the head of the collegial executive), so that the president’s New Year’s Address is simultaneously an inaugural address and does not necessarily follow this pattern. Popularly elected presidents are generally more likely to use this annual tradition to talk about (specific) policy. For instance, French president Francois Hollande spoke about economic reforms (several of which take effect 1 January 2015) and Cypriot president Nikos Anastasiadis outlined plans for modernisation of the state.

Apart from this divide, a less relevant albeit interesting division between presidents and monarchs appears in Europe. Apart from Germany, the Czech Republic and Malta, presidents address the nation on New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day (the Irish president provides a combined message), while the majority of monarchs (with Norway, Denmark and Monaco being the exception) deliver their message on Christmas Day. Hereby, it needs to be noted that German presidents until 1970 delivered their speech on New Year’s Day (which means they switched with the Chancellor). Czech presidents also gave New Year’s addresses until president Zeman returned to the pre-1949 tradition of delivering his speech at Christmas after his inauguration in 2013. I have tried to find reasons for the divide between presidents and monarchs, yet have not found any palpable evidence. Monarchs’ tendency to deliver Christmas messages might be related to their role in national churches (although this does not explain the Danish and Norwegian exceptions). Presidents on the other hand, deliver messages on the relatively world-view-‘neutral’ New Year’s Eve/Day. In Central and Eastern Europe, Communist leaders naturally avoided giving speeches on or related to Christmas Day. After the fall of Communism, this tradition was retained by the new democratic leaders. The Lithuanian and Romanian president form the general exception from all other European heads of state. While both issue short press statements to wish their citizens a happy Christmas and New Year, neither gives a specific speech. The Prince of Liechtenstein does not even that.

Although Christmas and New Year’s messages rarely belong to the most important political speeches in European democracies. Nevertheless, they reflect – although in varying degrees – not only the institutional arrangements of European democracies. Furthermore, they shed light on how political traditions develop (be it formally or informally) and can carry on from one regime to another (monarchy to republic; autocracy to democracy).

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A list with links to this year’s Christmas and New Year’s Addresses can be found here (if available the link is to an English version) –> Links to speeches 2014-2015
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Should you know more about the history and practice of Chrismas/New Year’s messages by heads of state in the countries discussed above, please let us know in the comment section below.

Presidential salaries – particularly during and after the European financial crisis – have been a hotly debated topic in a number of European republics and several office holders have voluntarily taken a pay cut. Last year, I wrote two blog posts about the earnings of Western and Central and Eastern European presidents or my old blog (presidentialactivism.com) which proved to be highly popular and generated some media attention. The posts which are reproduced here today and tomorrow try to answer the questions How much do presidents actually earn? Did the crisis have an impact on presidential salaries? And how do their earnings relate to other factors?

Austrian president Heinz Fischer is the highest paid president in Western Europe (if you do not count the Chairman of the Swiss Confederate Presidency) | photo by GuentherZ via wikimedia commons

Presidents’ absolute salaries in comparison

Given different regulations about salaries, lump sums and other benefits it is difficult to establish universally how much presidents actually earn. For this post I tried to ascertain (accurately, I hope) presidents’ yearly gross annual income exclusive of benefits. However, I decided to include so-called 13th/14th salaries as these are part of the taxable income and many presidents were either entitled to receive those or were recently deprived of them (see more under the penultimate subheading). Although the national gross average income would certainly be easier to interpret as a point of reference, I had chosen the 2012 GDP per capita for the sake of reliability. I was also not able to find reliable data for Cyprus (please leave a link in the comment section if you know a reliable source).

The bar chart shows that there is a huge variety in presidents’ salaries in Western Europe. The top-earner is the Swiss Federal President, i.e. the chairperson of the seven-person collegiate presidency that is elected ‘President of the Confederation’. Members of the Federal Council receive €360,358 annually, the president receives an additional €9,735 (i.e. 370,093 annually). The runner-up and top earner among the ‘normal’ presidents – the Swiss-type collegiate presidency is worldwide unique – is the Austrian president. Current incumbent Heinz Fischer receives a gross annual salary of €328,188 which consists of 12 regular monthly salaries + two additional monthly salaries (not benefits) of €23,442 each. George Abela, the president of Malta,, on the other hand earns the least with just €56,310 and thus almost six times less than the Austrian counterpart. The average presidential gross annual salary is €191,149, the average GDP per capita (2012) is €30,860. There are only few presidents who earn a similar absolute gross yearly salary, although this looks different for relative yearly salaries.

Setting earnings into perspective

Absolute numbers are always present a somewhat distorted image in cross-country comparisons, which is why it is good to set presidents’ gross annual income into perspective. As mentioned above, I use the respective country’s GDP per capita from 2012 as a point for comparison.

There is a lot of change of positions when comparing absolute and relative gross annual income. While the Maltese presidents is still the lowest paid democratically elected head of state in Europe with 350% of the GDP per capita, previous front-runner Switzerland is with 606% of the GDP/capita only 12 percentage points above the Western European average. Greek president Karolos Papoulisas – in absolute earnings rather on the lower end of the spectrum – now finds himself in third position as his annual gross salary is more than eight times more than the GDP per capita (and this even though his salary had already been halved last year – more on this below). The top-earners in relative terms are by far the presidents of Italy and Austria. Their gross annual salary amounts to almost nine times more than the nominal GDP per capita.

The correlation between GDP per capita and presidential salaries is surprisingly high (R=0.8) and Switzerland is the only real outlier. The plot also shows that Finnish president Niinistö earned less than one could have expected from the GDP per capita – even before his salary cut.

The crisis and its consequences

The crisis has certainly taken its toll on presidential salaries in Western Europe as several presidents experienced a pay cut or voluntarily cut their own salary. French president Hollande cut his salary by 30%, Irish president Higgins voluntarily waived 23.5% of his salary, Finnish president Niinistö waived 20%. In Greece, parliament cut the president’s salary by 50% (and abolished a €6,240/month representational allowance) after president Papoulias had suggested it. Papoulias had previously already waived his salary for a whole year as well as his right to a 13th and 14th monthly salary. Cypriot president (who could not be included in this ranking because of missing data) also waived his additional monthly salaries and cut his salary by 25% after his predecessor had already seen a 20% salary cut.

On the other hand, German president Gauck and Austrian president Fischer recently saw an increase in their income. In 2012, Gauck’s gross yearly income went up from €199,000 to €217,000 while Fischer receives has a modest €411 more in his bank account every month since the beginning of this year (this increase also applies to his two additional monthly salaries so that overall the gross yearly income went up by €5,754). At least in the case of Germany, this increase should not be seen too controversial. The president’s earnings are still rather average (see also scatter plot above) and had not been increased for almost a decade (furthermore, the salary is indirectly tied to the income of federal clerks).

Powers and mode of election

With relation to presidential powers and the mode of presidential election, the results contrast those from Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, the absolute results depend on whether Switzerland is included or not. Directly elected presidents have a gross yearly income of €183,355 (573% of the GDP per capita), while indirectly elected presidents (Switzerland included) earn €202,061 (664%) and thus more in absolute and relative terms. However, if one excludes Switzerland (which might be sensible due to the exceptionalism of the Swiss collegiate presidency) the gross yearly income is only €160,511 (703% of GDP per capita) which in absolute numbers is less but significantly more in relative terms.

When it comes to the relationship between presidential powers (measures taken from Siaroff 2003) and presidential income the correlation is R=0.0002 and thus non-existent.